


The Hitchhiker's Guide to Sburb

by thehelpfulfrog



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams, Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehelpfulfrog/pseuds/thehelpfulfrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Egbert lives a relatively normal life. That is, until his best internet friend reveals himself to be an editor of a popular publication known as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - and also not human. After narrowly avoiding the destruction of Earth (caused by the release of a widely anticipated videogame), he is then introduced to two of his other online companions: Rose, the universe's youngest interstellar pilot, and Jade, who has visions and is also part dog. Armed with a remarkably convenient piece of technology known as the Infinite Improbability Drive, the teenagers find themselves in orbit around a large green sun and in the unexpected company of several alien gods from another universe. Then things get really interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. where doing it man

**Author's Note:**

> Specific phrases in this introduction were taken directly from Douglas Adams' original work. On purpose. Sue me.

Years in the past, but not many, there existed a small unregarded blue-green planet.

On this planet existed a race of lifeforms so amazingly primitive that they considered the art of video gaming to be the pinnacle of creation. Of course they were not necessarily wrong on this count, but as all enlightened species know, the number-one indicator of an evolved society is the denial that video games are, were, or ever will be enjoyable, and the profuse insistence that tedious things like “fine wine” and “meaningful discussion” are more valuable.

But though these people were in fact correct in their assumption that gaming was the ultimate form of entertainment - far superior in every way to reading, human interaction, and sex (though just barely) - this insight soon created a problem. The problem was that the people of this planet, despite their barely evolved consciousnesses, never quite felt immersed enough in the experience. Improved graphics and audio nearly indistinguishable from reality, though these rapidly became the leading cause of induction into mental hospitals and prisons, were never quite enough for the average human. They wanted more.

Of course, as tends to happen with species as proud and thoughtless as humanity, the solution to this problem was not well liked at all. That is to say, the half dozen or so earthlings that managed to survive the sudden upgrade generally regarded it as a bad move.

This is the story of that upgrade, those earthlings, and a wholly remarkable book.

The book was called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and despite its wild inaccuracies and occasional dip into the approximate format of rap verse, it came to be immensely preferred over more scholarly sources of knowledge and wisdom for two reasons:

First, it was slightly cheaper; and second, it had the words ‘Don’t Panic’ inscribed in large friendly letters on the cover.

But the story of this disastrous upgrade, the story of its incomprehensible consequences entangled in causality and paradox, and the story of this remarkable book, begins simply.

It begins with a boy stuck in his home.

 

* * *

 

The aforementioned house was not a lot to look at, but it was also not little. The inhabitants of this house observed it to look exactly the same as every house surrounding it, almost as though an omnipotent and appallingly overworked artist of some sort had lacked the ability, on this neighborhoods’ creation, to invent a varied and interesting background for the scene that was their lives. However, the other houses probably contained far fewer clowns than this one.

The house was completely white and lacked any kind of railings on its stairs; a health hazard that was never really addressed.

On this day, the thirteenth of April, a young man stood in his bedroom, having just awoken from an unsatisfactory sleep to find a multitude of cakes strewn about his room. He of course ignored these, as he had come to expect an assortment of baked goods even on regular days – and today was the young man’s birthday.

His name was John Egbert, and the excitement of the previous night that had caused him to lose sleep was not from the impending threat of one more year of existence. It was because today he was going to receive a new video game.

John was short and freckled, and had spiky, unruly black hair. He spent the majority of his time making good friends on the internet, a practice which was considered by the real-life humans around him to be a bit sad, and which was considered by his good friends on the internet to be not only sad but also super duper lame, generally unhealthy, and “dude you could not be more of a loser if you somehow merged with matthew mcconoghauhahey and starred in a romcom that was about other romcoms”. John was the kind of person to either reply to these accusations with an unconvincing fake laugh or an even more unconvincing impression of someone who was offended by that kind of thing.

On this morning, John’s unironic excitement for the game he would receive was dulled by his lack of sleep. He therefore walked blearily to the hall, stepped on another of his fathers’ cakes, descended the stairs, greeted Dave (“Dave,” he said; “Egbert,” the boy replied without concern), left his house, opened the mailbox, grabbed the package inside, and then stopped to stare wistfully at the sky for his daily round of introspection.

As usual, but this time with a genuine cause – though he wasn’t to know it yet – he got the feeling that this was going to be a long day.

John reentered the house, greeted Dave again (“Dave,” he said; “Egbert,” the boy replied with even less concern) ascended the stairs, stepped on the same cake, reentered his room, opened the package, popped the enclosed disc into his computer, and activated Pesterchum in order to message his friend Dave Strider, who of course lived hundreds of miles away and who he had never seen before.

There was a problem with this. John thought about this for a moment, and then a moment later had descended the precarious flight of stairs again with practiced awkwardness and stumbling.

“Dave?” he said incredulously to the boy at the table, who was wearing a familiar pair of shades and an unfamiliar set of red pajamas, and was eating cereal with something that was definitely not milk.

“Egbert,” replied Dave for a third time and with the least concern of all, flipping the pages of a newspaper that was clearly upside-down - a fact of which John knew the other boy was painfully aware.

“Do you, um,” flailed John, “want to explain anything? To me? Uh, right now?”

“Dude you’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”


	2. where making it happen

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has quite a few things to say on the topic of friendship, as it is a highly popular emotion among the sentient species of the known universe. As well as insisting several times that, yes, friendship is definitely an emotion, the Guide even goes so far as to provide a definition, which is essentially that friends are the people that you consistently allow to annoy the hell out of you for the greater part of your life.  The Guide goes on to say that the reasons for tolerating this kind of irritation are mostly unknown and largely nonsensical, and that the majority of lifeforms who participate likely suffer from latent masochistic tendencies.

John and Dave were very good friends.

“So the world’s going to end in… how long did you say?”

“I didn’t,” Dave replied, pausing to slurp cereal directly from the bowl. “Four minutes, if you were wondering.”

“Yeah, I was, thanks.” John was vaguely aware of the fact that he had sat down at some point, but not of much else. “And it’s because of my video game?”

“Yours, mine, Jade’s, Rose’s, and pretty much everyone else who had some spare time and felt like destroying the fuckin’ world. Here dude, you’re gonna need this.” He slid his bowl of cereal across the table in what was probably the most suave way someone could do that sort of thing.

John, distantly wondering how his friend had known the exact whereabouts of the utensils in his house, grabbed it and drank deeply, and then immediately began spluttering and choking in a distinctly un-suave manner.

“This,” he coughed, “is not milk.”

“No dude, what did you fuckin’ expect. Who looks at a bowl of something the general color of piss and decides ‘hey wow what a totally normal bowl of cereal, this’ll be a fantastic addition to my healthy balanced diet.’ And don’t give me that moronic slack jawed look either it’s not actually piss, it’s just. You know. Muscle relaxant.”

“Muscle relaxant?”

“Muscle relaxant.”

John groaned loudly and put his head in his hands. “This is really awesome. My best friend shows up on my birthday from across the whole country for a surprise visit, and suddenly I’m an underage drinker and the world’s going to end in…”

“Three-point-five minutes.”

“Yeah, that.”

Several moments passed uneventfully, and then John sat bolt upright. “Wait, what?! Dave, we have to stop this somehow! Why the hell are we sitting around eating breakfast and making generally irresponsible decisions? And by we, I mean you, because I am in fact a very mature and law-abiding person!”  He stood and headed hastily for the door.

Dave rolled his eyes (though you wouldn’t have known it for his cool shades) and got up to follow him. “Alright shit, dude, chill out,” he said - as regretfully as was possible while saying that particular sentence - lightly taking hold of the receding boy by his arm. “We’ve got a few seconds before Earth becomes the official punching bag of the apocalypse, so maybe I can actually explain some stuff.”

John reluctantly turned back to his friend. “That would be great, thanks,” he replied, with only the slightest arrogance.

Dave sighed, and then straightened himself. “So, right, uh, how long have we known each other?”

“Maybe six months, I guess.”

“And what if I told you that living across the country from you is actually a huge load of crap and I grew up in space with some hella rad aliens?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it does sound like the sort of thing you would say, but-“

“Oh god this is so useless. See I knew I had a good reason for trying to skip over the whole epic revelation crap until we got on the ship, but no, we just had to do this right now or you’d go try to heroically save everyone on your shitty planet and get heroically socked right in the face by a meteor. Nice job yo. Really helping me save your life.”

“Hey wait, what’s that about a ship?”

“Right, yeah, that. How do we get to your roof.”

John glanced over his friend’s shoulder towards the stairs, intending to gesture the way, and then looked down to where Dave’s hand was still clutching his wrist. Immediately the other boy dropped his arm to his side.

“Two minutes dude,” Dave said deflectively, and then they were racing up the stairs.

 

* * *

 

“So you’re not gonna say anything about the cake?”

“Nah.”

“Or the weird clowns?”

“Dude, I distinctly remember telling you about my bro’s smuppet obsession, so if this was weirder than what I live with, you’d know.”

“Fair enough.”

The wind whistled over the rooftop where John and Dave stood, staring directly upwards at a fixed point someplace in the sky.

“So did Rose and Jade mention when they planned on getting us the hell out of here?”

“No idea, but considering the ship they’ve got it’ll probably be the exact second before your planet kicks the metaphorical bucket.”

“Because that meteor is getting awfully close to us.”

And so it was. As far as the eye could see, chunks of rock glowing a menacing orange-red were hurtling towards the earth at immense speeds. What appeared to be the largest of the bunch was situated directly over John’s house, probably by yet another random coincidence.

John, at this moment, was feeling quite fed up with random coincidences - unaware that these phenomena would be essentially the entire basis for the rest of his life. At the moment he wished only to be saved or crushed to death, whichever happened soonest.

Dave, at the same moment, was attempting to mask any signs of his horrible apprehension about the imminent possibility of death, lest his cool persona be shattered forever. He tried to make his face settle into its usual unconcerned expression, but only succeeded in looking like he was about to vomit. Fortunately John was paying too much attention to the meteor, which was now concerningly large and only ten seconds away.

“Dave, how much time do we have?”

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

The temperature was rising fast.

“Dave?”

Six. 

Five.

A few citizens below had the good sense to start screaming.

“This is really not the best time to give me the silent treatment.”

Four.

Three.

Two.

The heat was becoming unbearable. The meteor filled nearly the whole sky.

“Dave, what-“ John turned to his friend and saw the last thing he had expected to see: true fear.

One.

A flash of gold.

A blinding light.

Zero.


End file.
